Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of September 2019

Case name: 2019_09_28-AEG582
Situation: 1 group of 40 ppl and one group of 30 ppl (many women and children) in distress between Turkey and Greece, brought back to Turkey. One group in distress close to Mytilene, finally arrived on Lesvos on their own.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded/ Unconfirmed
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases:
On Saturday, 28th of September 2019 the Alarm Phone worked on 3 cases in the Aegean Sea:
The first alarm reached us at 00:36am CEST from 40 travelers drifting between Turkey and Greece south of Lesvos. They were picked up by the Turkish Coastguard and taken back to Turkey.
The second case was almost at the same location, with 30 people in distress, among them many women and children, according to the people. The Turkish Coastguard took care of the case.
The third case came in at 09:00pm CEST from a boat heading towards to Mytilene. We informed the Greek Coastguard but one hour later the travelers landed on the island on their own.

Case 1: At 00:36am CEST our shift team received the GPS location and a phone number of a boat, carrying 40 people, drifting south of Lesvos in international waters. According to the people their engine had been stolen. We called the people but due to communication problems we could not find out more about their situation. At 00:57am the travelers sent a new position and asked for help via voice message. As we located their position in the Greek Search and Rescue zone we alerted the Greek Coastguard at 01:00am but they told us the SAR operation was in Turkish responsibility. As they insisted, we called the Turkish Coastguard at 01:09am who informed us that they already had a vessel close to the boat and starting the rescue operation while waiting for a second vessel which should arrive in one hour, as there were so many people to pick up. We sent an e-mail with the collected information to the Turkish Coastguard. From then on we could not re-establish a connection to the travelers but at 03:20am the Turkish Coastguard told us that the rescue was currently taking place.

Case 2: At 02:09am we received a distress message and a GPS location in Greek waters from a group of 30 people reporting that it was very urgent, there were many women and children on board, they had run out of fuel and the Greek Coastguard was close to them on a boat but did not rescue them. At 02:23am we received a new GPS position and at 02:25am we called the Greek Coastguard who rejected the responsibility, stating the boat was in Turkish waters and told us the Turkish Coastguard was already taking action. As the GPS location of this case was very close to the boat we were in contact with at the same time, we assumed the Turkish Coastguard has found the people in the same rescue operation but did not get a final confirmation.

Case 3: At 09:00pm CEST our shift team was alerted to a boat in distress in the south east of Lesvos, close to Mytilene in Greek waters. At 09:05pm we informed the Greek Coastguard and one hour later we called again to ask if there were news about the case. The officer asked us if we had new information. One minute after the phone call we were informed that the travelers had landed on their own on Lesvos. We called the Coastguard again and informed them about it.